Bit too early to write much, but I will be trying to post when away – moving around a bit, but will give it a go.  May be a bit erratic!  Holidays always a bit of a pressure cooker moment.  Huge amounts of expectation, everyone in close proximity for long periods.  Have to look like fun being had even if things not perfect…but who knows, maybe this will be the perfect holiday!

And all this makes perfect sense.  Feeling loved and valued as a child is vital if we are to love and value ourselves as adults.  I say feeling loved because a mother suffering depression does not love her child any less, but if she is withdrawn physically or emotionally, then communicating that love my be more difficult.

My mother was first taken to a psychiatrist at the age of 11.  In the 1940’s in England, that was comparatively rare.  She suffered two breakdowns by her early ’20’s for which she received treatment.  These experiences so frightened her that she never sought further help for her anxiety and depression.  She self-medicated with food and weekly trips to the library where she would take out a pile of books, usually biographies, and spend her time in bed immersing herself in the lives of others.  My father would frequently return from work and make supper, taking a tray up to my mother.  Mummy’s tired, he would say.

So, we became used to being on our own, raiding the larder for tinned pineapple and condensed milk if we became hungry.  I can’t say that my childhood struck me as unhappy at the time.  My parents had frequent screaming rows which frightened us – fear of divorce, fear of our father leaving and then what… But the feelings of not being valued came to roost in my teens, which were truly horrific.  Wild child par excellence.  Drugs, drink, running away from home, living in squats, anything to distance myself from feeling worthless and anything to get away from home.

By and large, things worked out.  Met wonderful man at university who still thinks I’m clever and funny and gorgeous (well, he’s a bit short-sighted…) and I think he saved me from myself.  The clinical depression came later, luckily, so I hope that my own children, who I have told every day of their lives are the most brilliant people on earth, got the best of me.

All this mother talk came from a brilliant book I have just finished reading, The Ghost in the House: Mothers, Children and Depression by Tracy Thompson.  She is a journalist, a great writer, compassionate and insightful.  Her first book, The Beast: A Journey Through Depression is also one for the book list.  She interviews countless women bringing up children in the face of depression.  All inspiring, and immeasurably helpful to hear their tales and learn from the challenges they face.

And above all, remember that we are all doing our best.  My mother did her best. She loved us but sometimes found it too difficult to leave the safety of her books.  And, despite everything, she remembers the time when my sister and I were little as the happiest days of her life.

The second thing I was struck by was the bravery of these men* at the top of their cut-throat professions coming forward and admitting that they had suffered from debilitating depression, often requiring becoming psychiatric in-patients.  You could say that they are all very successful and make a great deal of money for the financial institutions they work for and so would only be out of a job if they stopped being productive.  And that may well be.  But, to my mind, any examples out there in the workplace of people living with mental illness and combining that with a successful career has to help.

The CEO of HBOS, who has battled depression for twenty years, said that the pain of depression was worse than when be broke his leg skiing – and then had the ambulance door shut on it!  He is not the only one to prefer the pain of physical illness to the insidious, terrifying pain of mental illness.  And the more that he and those like him tell their stories, the better it will be for everyone.

* only men mentioned in the article.  And, let’s be frank, the City of London is still very much a male-dominated arena.  No doubt there are many women at the top of the financial tree who are similarly afflicted.  Could the thought of that great glass ceiling have made them a little more cautious about “coming out”?

Two things about going away.  The first is that I start to panic about what I’ve forgotten.  Yes, I know we don’t leave until Wednesday, but I’m already imagining that airport scenario, the one where the tickets/passports/citalopram has been left on the kitchen worktop.

The second is flying.  Although Mr Totalblue jets around the world on business regularly, I have a lifelong fear of flying.  Common, I know, but nasty nonetheless.  I have missed friends weddings, wonderful holidays and opportunities for study abroad because I just couldn’t face the flight.  Over the years I have had good and bad patches of this.  My best friend from school was American, living over in London with her divorced mother, but when she went to college in the States, I was determined to visit.  And I did.  Several times.  With varying degrees of success.  This largely depended on whether I overdid the Ativan – four tablets every one hour as opposed to one tablet every four hours.  One time ended up on the luggage carousel at Logan airport, not my finest moment, and on another flight I had a massive panic attack and threw up on a fellow passenger.  Ugly.

So you could say that I am viewing the flight to LA with some trepidation.  Few Xanax in my bag.  Will try to avoid them and breathe deeply instead.  Not holding out that much hope for the breathing, but you never know. 

A few years ago I went on a fear of flying course.  Not only did I meet one of my now-best friends as we sat waiting for our test flight in and out of Heathrow, but I did pick up a few tips which helped.  One of which is this: when you think the plane is banking so steeply that it must at any moment be on it’s side, take a look at your glass of water.  The water level will be at the angle of the plane.  Amazingly gentle!  The other tip is this: when you hit turbulence (my pet hate) shut your eyes and imagine that you are in a car driving down a cobbled road.  On a road, the bumps would be nothing.  So try not to let those bumps in the air worry you.

And now all I have to do is follow my own advice!

So here I am!  Back in front of the screen again.  Only been blogging for a short while, but I do find it an escape and a distraction.  And starting to feel that there really is a community out there full of people who experience life in some way similar to me.

I have picked up my psychology studies again (on and off for years now!) and am interested in the power of social media to support people through depression and other mental illnesses.  I can be a bit sceptical about traditional therapies that root around in your past (years of that and not sure it was helpful, although I appreciate that it is horses for courses) and am starting CBT when I hit the top of the waiting list, but maybe talking to fellow sufferers is one of the best therapies of all.

Which is why I am taking the group CBT option.  And why I am looking into depression support groups.  Will report back on both!  And I wonder if anyone has done any research on the power of the blog to effect change in those suffering depression and anxiety?

More questions than anything today, but it is Saturday and I am tired and I need my toast and marmalade!

Now, I’m not about to go all Doris Day and switch to twins beds after 24 years of sharing, but when you are such a light sleeper as I am, the slightest twitch of the duvet can be all it takes to summon total wakefulness.  Still, I miss him when he’s not here and hate the thought of him in the house in another bed.  So that’s that.

I’ve always connected my depression with insomnia.  The first debilitating depression I suffered as an adult was after a neuroma in my foot would wake me up screaming in the early hours.  The timing coincided with Mr Totalblue setting up his own business – very stressful all round.  So, not only was I waking in pain but I had something real to worry about as I lay there waiting for the knives in my foot to start again.

And that was it.  Over six years ago now.  And I have not slept through the night since.  The citalopram helps.  No doubt.  When I decided that I would be fine without it (!) a few months ago, I was plunged straight back into the nightmare of insomnia, anxiety and panic attacks, gripped by fear and crying in the dark.  I still wake up when taking it, but that rush of adrenalin doesn’t kick in and I get back to sleep quicker and generally without the tears.  Although the pills definitely make me a little slower, I have to accept that.  For me, it is better than living life in a state of mental exhaustion and physical hyperactivity with the feeling that an elephant is sitting on my chest.

And I know that it is the SAD thing.  Bit of a myth that it is just in the winter months.  The expectation of the summer months, warm, long, sunny days, is what keeps me going through the colourless winter (and spring).  And when those expectations are dashed and July looks more like February, well, come on down depression.

The disjunct between our expectations of life and the reality is often cited as one of the causes of depression.  I think that is why autumn is my favourite season.  Every good autumn day is a bonus.  I have no expectation of sunny skies and dry days, so when they come I feel unreasonably cheery.  And also the colours.  All those reds, rusty browns and yellows.  The London parks are always at their best in the autumn.  And much less crowded.

Anyway, back to now and the failed summer.  As I sat inside yesterday, channel hopping but not able to concentrate on anything, not even Oprah, I found myself wanting to hop into bed with a good book.  But none were to hand.  I read avidly and quickly, so books tend not to lie around unread.  What I wanted to do was to hop to the charity shop and pick up a quick and absorbing read.  Crime is good for disappearing into fast – moves along nicely, no high-faluting concepts to grasp, and a neat solution.  Perfect.  Or funny.  When I was a teenager and feeling low, I would pick up my fathers’ P G Wodehouse and laugh out loud at the absurdities of upper class life in the 1920’s.  In my twenties, John Irving and Robertson Davies were my favourite funnies.  So humour also works well.

Yesterday I needed a book, but I couldn’t face the rain.  So today I am off to the charity shop (might pop next door to the bakery for a donut or two) to satisfy my literary cravings.  And unless the weather perks up considerably, I hear my bed calling.

I was not depressed when I started the course, but I was definitely less cheery after two years of psychodynamic therapy.  Firstly, it was all negative.  What was wrong?  Why was it wrong?  How horrible was your childhood?  No balance, no positive solutions, and very often no reply at all.  And that is the second issue.  So much talk about a holding environment – I don’t think so.  Lying on a grotty old bed which represented the couch – I wanted to sit but was firmly talked out of it – staring at a crack in the ceiling which reminded me of the Nile Delta.  Not helpful.

Some years later, having hit a bad patch, I took myself along to see a counsellor, a friendly lady who handed me tissues and at least made me feel that I was normal to feel sad.  At least felt listened to at a time when I wouldn’t have dreamt of letting my friends, or even my husband, know the truth of how I was feeling.

So, later this year I am starting a course of cognitive behavioural therapy.  I have read a great deal about it and all the research shows that it can be at least as effective as the pills.  We’ll see.  But, whatever else, it is a therapy that tries to mend and show a way forward rather than pick at the scab of unhappiness.

OK, so he was a private doctor.  This was due to a hideous experience at my local GP, where I had booked an emergency appointment, feeling on the verge of something truly frightening, and was left waiting for over two hours.  And even then, when I asked the surly receptionist when I might be seen, she said that my appointment wasn’t a “proper” one, so I would just have to wait until the end of surgery.  I started shaking, crying, feeling completely sidelined, and was never able to set foot in the surgery again.  The only surgery that my local health authority had spaces in at that time.  So, now I was paying as the thought of visiting the local GP almost brought on a panic attack.

Back to private doc.  I have private health insurance through my husband’s work.  What about getting therapy through BUPA?  I asked.  Not a wise idea, said doc, would have to see a psychiatrist and you don’t want that on your medical records…

So, an oncologist is fine, a rheumatologist, a neurologist, but not a psychiatrist.  Because, somewhere deep down in our collective psyche is the feeling that mental illness is not really an illness but at best a failing of personality and at worst a dangerous, pernicious beast stalking the streets.

No wonder we hide our emotional distress, our mental illnesses, from ourselves.  Is it that we find them unacceptable or the knowledge that once this information about us is unleashed on the world, we will never be seen the same way again.

Long before I fell into the black hole that is depression, I succumbed to SAD on an annual basis.  Even I, who didn’t fully admit to clinical depression until my life had ground to a total standstill, knew that from the second week in January until sometime in late February, I would hibernate.  Didn’t want to see anyone, go out or make plans.  My ready-meal quotient shot through the roof.  Planning meals, shopping, let alone cooking, all seemed too much.  And then, usually with the first few sunny days of spring, the switch would flick and I would be ok.  That winter funk forgotten.

And then the the SAD thing forgot to go away in February.  It would linger well into March and then into April.  And when, a few years ago, I was still hibernating in May. I knew that this was more than the winter blues.

Despite being on a healthy dose of Citalopram, waking up to a day like today still makes me want to curl up under the duvet and wait for summer.  But hang on.  This is it…